The Walden Effect: Farming, simple living, permaculture, and invention.

Skylight graduation

insulation Anna insulating new building
The skylight passed its final test last week when it held back a good size downpour with no leakage.

Today was the day it graduated to being fully insulated and covered up with plywood.

We went for two layers of insulation and it wasn't so bad getting it to stay in place with a good staple gun.

It's hard to describe just how good it feels to almost be finished with this project that we began a year ago this week.



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About us: Anna Hess and Mark Hamilton spent over a decade living self-sufficiently in the mountains of Virginia before moving north to start over from scratch in the foothills of Ohio. They've experimented with permaculture, no-till gardening, trailersteading, home-based microbusinesses and much more, writing about their adventures in both blogs and books.



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Overjoyed!
I'm so thrilled at the building being pretty much done! I probably should have let us put in the extra week's work this spring... Nothing left to do except move Mark into his new office, paint the roof, and paint the outside walls.
Comment by anna — Thu Oct 21 20:32:03 2010
Staples

I think a good staple gun is one of the most underrated tool. Used for everything from construction to hobbies to furniture and so much more.

Glad to see your room nearing completion. I'm sure all the hard work is going to pay off this first winter of use.

Congrats.

Comment by Erich — Thu Oct 21 20:49:14 2010
comment 3
Are you installing two layers of insulation with a vapor barrier in between? Not a good idea. Vapor barriers should only be on the inside skin of the room.
Comment by Errol — Thu Oct 21 21:43:50 2010
Two layers of insulation
It sounds like you're right, but since we did the whole ceiling that way, I'm not going to take it down. We had to cut out lots of little pieces of insulation for the ceiling since it would have been over twice as expensive to buy the appropriate stuff (24" wide R30 instead of 15" wide R15 doubled up.) I'm sure there are lots of air gaps between those sheets of vapor barrier for moisture to waft on out --- due to the width of the insulation, we couldn't install it the right way, like we did in the walls, with the vapor barrier carefully stapled along the studs to form a real seal. If I had to do it over again, though, I'd take off the vapor barrier on the upper sheet for safety's sake.
Comment by anna — Fri Oct 22 09:59:44 2010
Staple guns
Erich --- I even used it to touch up the underfloor insulation, which had come loose since I put it on too early. Staple guns really do make everything go smoothly!
Comment by anna — Fri Oct 22 10:01:09 2010
P.S. (To Daddy)
I think I should have named this building "I made every conceivable mistake at least once". :-) I sure have learned a lot, though!
Comment by anna — Fri Oct 22 10:02:48 2010
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